Happy Halloween!

Since Halloween is both a day of having fun and remembering the dead, today we're revisiting the soundtrack to the zombie hoedown that kicked off this month, Return of the Living Dead, to honor a sadly departed contributor to that masterwork. Roky Erickson died in June of this year, leaving behind one of the finest catalogues of psychedelic/horror rock. We heard a couple songs from him last year, when he was still out and about performing shows. I'm kicking myself that I missed him in New Jersey on Halloween of last year, but some nice person posted a video of a whole show from that same tour here. Below, check out his contribution to Return of the Living Dead. It's a song called "Burn the Flames" and the video features a deleted segment from the scene that features Roky's song. It's well-suited for a voluntary cremation scene, but the song lyrics themselves are even creepier than the movie. A skeleton sitting at his organ, his candelabra burning hellishly hellish hell... Wherever Roky is now, I know his flame is still burning higher, higher, and higher.

Now that the somber part is over, don't forget the fun part! It's time to eat all the candy (yes all of it), to wear your monster clothing to work, and to crank the Halloween tunes loud enough to drown out your neighbor's complaints about the noise. And don't forget what Return of the Living Dead taught us--this isn't a costume, it's a way of life! Happy Halloween!

Aria kidding me?

Just wanted to slip one last song in before the last spooky song of the season. If you've ever thought opera to be unfunny and impenetrable (aside from the one sung by Bugs Bunny, that is), Joseph Keckler is here to change your mind. His rich voice spans three octaves and he sings in German and Italian more than English, but his songs cover such un-stuffy topics as a demon-infused magic mushroom trip and a mob of strangers he met on the internet showing up at his house a few years late. "Goth Song" is his opus about re-becoming a teen goth and the strain that puts on one's adult work life. Turns out it's not so easy to maintain "the look" when one has to buy all those vinyl clothes using one's paycheck rather than an allowance. 

If you dig this song, check out his other videos on his website. They're all great! And don't pass up a chance to hear his amazing voice live--right now he's on tour with Sleater Kinney. Unless of course you spent all your concert money on vinyl clothing.

  

Damned Legends

Just before leaving town last weekend, I was able to catch the mother of all Halloween concerts--The Misfits with The Damned and Rancid! After seeing the original lineup for The Misfits last year, I thought I would never get that opportunity again. But the band is still on the prowl, and now scheduled for yet another show past the court-mandated ten that started this tour in motion (December in Philadelphia--merry Christmas!!). They sounded a hundred times better at Madison Square Garden this year than they did in Jersey last year, and they brought along two openers who hold their own ranks in punk rock nobility.

This is especially true of The Damned. They formed in London in 1976, a year before the Misfits came together in New Jersey. They were the first UK punk band to release a single, an album, and to tour the US. They paved the way for Goth, with lead singer Dave Vanian's vampire stage looks, and the band's sometimes gloomy sound and horror-tinged subjects. As much as I love Rancid and their always-fun live show, it does seem a little wrong that The Damned opened for them rather than vice versa. The founding members of Rancid weren't yet teenagers when The Damned formed, yet last weekend Dave Vanian and company stepped onto the stage that defines "arena rock" and turned it into the best punk venue in town, with Vanian quipping that "it's great to be back at CBGB."

Today's song comes from The Damned's 1979 album Machine Gun Etiquette. "Plan 9 Channel 7" is a somber ode to the original horror hostess and star of Plan 9 from Outer Space, Vampira. Supposedly Vampira, aka Maila Nurmi, had a close friendship/perhaps more than friendship with James Dean, which is hinted at in this song. Below is the original video for the song, with a (very young) Damned being led into a misty forest by a Vampira lookalike. Does a terrifying rubber monster await them there? Stay tuned to Channel 7 for the explosive conclusion...

Nice pumpkins!

I'll be traveling to my homeland of southern Appalachia over the next week and unable to do any posts, so in honor of my birthplace, today's song is by Appalachia's patron saint, Dolly Parton. Dolly is by far my favorite musician, but sadly she hasn't done a lot spooky songs that fit our purposes here. The closest we've come is when her former TV singing partner, Porter Wagoner, showed up the first year of this blog with his unsettling madhouse ode "The Rubber Room." Dolly has done a few creepy numbers, like her ghostly dead child ballad "Jeannie's Afraid of the Dark," her beautiful woman-gone-mad epic "Mountain Angel," and her rendition of the classic murder ballad "Banks of the Ohio."

But my favorite Halloween-worthy Dolly composition isn't a song but a recitation of a scary story her mother used to tell her and her siblings to make them get in bed at night. "Bloody Bones and Scratch Eyes" comes from Dolly's first live album, 1970's A Real Live Dolly. It was recorded in the auditorium of her alma mater, Sevier County High School in Sevierville Tennessee, so Dolly's mother was probably sitting there in the audience when Dolly admitted this story used to make her wet the bed. She says that now that she's grown, she's still not sure if there's not a real Boogerman, Scratch Eyes, and Rawhead Bloody Bones lurking the hills and forests of Appalachia. Who knows, maybe I'll encounter one of those creatures while I'm home. If so, I hope my bladder isn't full...

¡Diversión monstruosa!

Of all the new horror shows clogging up streaming services and TV airwaves these days, my favorite of the year (and maybe of the past several years) is one I didn't think I'd like at all. When I first saw ads for Los Espookys in the subway, I thought it would be yet another teen supernatural drama. I mean look at that poster--you could easily drop a teenage witch or two in there without stirring the fog. But the only somewhat correct thing about my assumption is the supernatural part.

In reality, Los Espookys is one of the most delightfully odd shows I've ever seen. It concerns a group of friends in an unnamed Mexican city who turn their love of horror into a business staging supernatural events for paying clients. For instance, in one episode the group creates a sea monster for a seaside village needing a tourism boost. In another they help an ambassador stage her own abduction with the help of a cursed mirror. The show is as funny as it is strange--kind of like if Pete and Pete from The Adventures of Pete and Pete grew up, learned Spanish, and got really obsessed with the supernatural.

Los Espookys got renewed for a second season, so hopefully by this time next year we'll all be watching the further adventures of Renaldo, Tati, Ursula, and Andres (and maybe more than six episodes this time, pretty please?). Until then, enjoy the song that opens and closes the show, "Ellos Quieren Sangre" (They Want Blood) by Varsovia.

The trailer doesn't do justice to how hilariously surreal and surreally hilarious the show is, but if you haven't seen it before, this will give you an idea of what you're missing. 

Hex the patriarchy!

If you've been wishing our modern era of free gender expression would extend itself to our most popular deities, Twin Temple is one step ahead of you (at least on the Satan front). We heard from this devilish doo-wop group last year, with a song from their self-titled debut. Just this month they released a new single: "Satan's A Woman" backed with "I Am A Witch." The album's cover describes these songs as "The diabolical new singles from the wickedest band in the world, presented in monophonic sound for your listening pleasure. Suitable for ritual use."

In the case of "Satan's A Woman," however, the ritual wouldn't involve virgin sacrifice so much as a mean Watusi. This Dame Scratch doesn't need your money or blood because she makes her own and is proud of it! Mama never said there'd be days like this, when the devil comes out as female through the medium of a song you can do The Twist to, but I'm glad they're here.

Twin Temple is on tour right now, so go bow down as low as you can go if they come to a town near you! I have tickets to see them in December and am already breaking in my cloven dance shoes. 

Tis the season to be witchy

2019 seems to be the year of so-so horror films with better-than-average spooky song remakes on their soundtracks. In addition to the reimagining of "Pet Sematary" by Starcrawler that we heard yesterday, Lana Del Rey did an excellent spooky/sexy cover of Donovan's "Season of the Witch" for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. 

We heard a song from the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books back in 2014, long before there was word of a movie version in the works. Those books are sacred ground for me, since they both terrified and fascinated me as a kid. I can't say the new film flew over the bar I had set for it in my mind, but it didn't crash and burn, either. It's actually a fairly decent gateway horror film for tweens/teens, as well as a nifty nostalgia trip for people like myself who want to see Stephen Gammell's hideous artistic creations rise from the page. To my delight (and probably to the credit of producer Guillermo del Toro), the movie doesn't hold back on breathing putrid, rotten life into Gammell's monsters. See for yourself in these side-by-side comparisons of The Pale Lady and Harold the Scarecrow!

No need to fear a shoddy rendering of a perennial Halloween playlist tune, either. However you feel about Lana Del Rey, her ethereal melancholia is perfectly suited for "Season of the Witch."

Sometimes dead is better.

This weekend I visited one of the spookiest sites in rock 'n roll history--the graveyard where The Ramones filmed their video for "Pet Sematary"! It's located just an hour north of New York City in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which at this time of year you can tour in the dead of night by lantern. According to our tour guide, Stephen King is a huge Ramones fan and in the early 80s invited them to dinner at his house in Maine. Marky Ramone claimed King gave them a preliminary copy of Pet Sematary, at which point Dee Dee Ramone shut himself up in a room in King's house for a couple hours and wrote the lyrics to the song.

Stephen King later said this story is complete bs, but also told his publisher not to change a word of it. Quoting James Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, he said "When the truth and legend are in opposition, print the legend." Whatever actually happened, the song certainly got written and used in the 1989 film version of King's book, and the video for the song certainly got recorded in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Keep your eyes peeled, a couple of those weirdos hanging out in the graveyard at night are Debbie Harry and Chris Stein from Blondie!

 

I wasn't a big fan of the Pet Sematary remake that got released earlier this year, but the remake of the Ramones' classic title song featured in it is actually pretty decent! It's by the band Starcrawler and brings a 70s Blue Oyster Cult-ish vibe to the song. Check it out!

Since You're Gone

Just last month we lost one of the most iconic voices of 80s pop, who also went on to produce some of the biggest albums of the 1990s and early 2000s. I think Ric Ocasek's obituary in The New York Times describes his seminal work with The Cars best: "[They] merged a vision of romance, danger, and nocturnal intrigue and the concision of new wave music with the sonic depth and ingenuity of radio-friendly rock." Which basically means they were ultra-cool and rocking and smarter than the average radio sludge.

Throughout the 80s while The Cars were having monster hit after monster hit, Ric Ocasek was also releasing some solo albums. Today's song comes from his second solo work: 1986's This Side of Paradise. "Hello Darkness" is the only song on the album that Ric cowrote with his Cars bandmate/keyboard player Greg Hawkes, and you can certainly hear the moody/synthy crossover. Ric said it's about his love of darkness, which of course makes it perfect Halloween listening. Slip on a pair of black shades in Ric's honor and dig!  

Ric Ocasek grew up in Baltimore, so naturally he ended up in a John Waters movie!

Eighth Wonder of the World!

Another theatrical highlight for me this year was finally seeing one of my lifelong heroes in person--King Kong! The Broadway musical version of his classic story opened last winter, after an initial run in Australia. Much like Bat Out of Hell, its appeal isn't so much its story (or in this case its songs, either), but its amazing visuals. The King Kong puppet is a true wonder to behold, and by far my favorite performance of the year. He could make me cry with just a twitch of his eyebrows--can't say that's true for any human Tony winners out there. 

Hail to the King!

The musical's story follows the plot of the 1933 film pretty closely, although the Ann Darrow character is updated to be a little less "damsel in distress" than when Fay Wray embodied her. But Kong is still the gorilla we know and love, fighting a giant serpent, rampaging through New York (and up the Empire State Building), and falling much too hard for the lady he loves. The Kong puppet is an artistic masterwork, and the projections and set pieces perfectly animate him within his world. After just a few minutes, you forget that he can't move without a small swarm of black-clad ninja assistants. If you're curious how he works, check out this insightful clip from CBS This Morning.

So far no cast album has been released for King Kong, and the only video for a complete song I can find from the show is the performance of "Full Moon Lullaby" the cast did for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade last year. The song is pretty sappy, but at least there's some sweet Kong action at the beginning and end of it. This song comes just before Ann betrays Kong's trust by luring him to the men who will capture him. I like to imagine the song ends with Kong smashing her, and he's still living happily on Skull Island today.

Schlock 'n Roll

Confetti duty.

What do you get when you add a little too much Grease and Repo! The Genetic Opera to your Meatloaf? Something pretty close to the currently-touring Bat Out of Hell musical based on Meatloaf's trilogy of albums of the same name. The plot is a little vague: something to do with a boy stuck forever at age 18 falling in star-crossed love with the daughter of a tycoon. But no one goes to this show for the plot. You go for the Meatloaf! And the special effects! And the confetti! So much of it, in fact, that it's one stagehand's job to vacuum it all up during intermission so more can replace it later.


I caught a performance of Bat Out of Hell this summer during its run at New York City Center (sadly not on the night Meatloaf showed up). As a Meatloaf fan, it was easy to forgive the show's narrative shortcomings when the actors were totally killing Mr. Loaf's classics. They brought all the passion that the playwright left at home. Check them out below, singing the earworm-riddled title song about a rebel boy riding his steel steed all the way down into the fiery depths. Sadly this is a scaled-down version of the actual production--imagine that bike breaking into pieces at the end. Then fire! Smoke! Confetti!

Smoke & Mirrors

The Bride of Dracula!

When a drag queen says her biggest inspiration comes from every Dracula film she's ever seen, and that she styles her eyebrows after Nosferatu, I know I have to support her in all her endeavors. I first became aware of Sasha Velour during the 2017 season of RuPaul's Drag Race, which she won with a gaggingly beautiful and inventive performance of "So Emotional" by Whitney Houston. Since then, she has continued to refine her strikingly original style and innovative shows through a monthly nightclub gig here in New York, and now a one-queen show called Smoke & Mirrors that she is taking on tour this month!

I was lucky enough to catch a performance of that show last spring and was blown away by the artistry of her costumes, projections, and props that turned a simple stage into a living tree, a chorus line of many Sashas, a rainy day complete with puddles, and so much more. Here she is at her monthly "Nightgowns" show in Brooklyn performing Annie Lennox's "Love Song for a Vampire" from the soundtrack to Bram Stoker's Dracula. Can't you feel the rhythm of that trembling heart?

Black #1!

I see a skeleton and I want to paint it black!

Yesterday's post about seeing Carpenter Brut open a show for Ministry has me wanting to relive the entire ear-bleeding glory of that amazing night last fall. When we last heard from Ministry on this blog (in 2014!), I thought I had missed my chance to ever see them perform. Their lead guitarist died of a heart attack onstage in 2012, and lead singer Al Jourgensen said the band wouldn't regroup again. 

Well never is a long time, and Ministry is not only back on tour, but they also have a new album out: AmeriKKKant. True to most other Ministry albums, it's a brutal assault on our current political landscape, so maybe a little too scary for our purposes here. Instead, we're going to hear from a 2010 album of remixes and covers called Everyday is Halloween: Greatest Tricks. On it, they put their rude and crude industrial disco stamp on such unlikely targets as "Rehab," "Sharp-Dressed Man," and today's song, "Paint It Black." While I'm not a huge Rolling Stones fan, when it's Ministry telling me to paint anything that will stand still long enough black, I'ma grab a brush. 

Beware the Beast (Inside Your Heart)

The characters in the video for today's song look like they could be 1980s time travelers from Return of the Living Dead, but shockingly "Beware the Beast" is a recent song by a French group that formed only a few years ago called Carpenter Brut. Clearly these guys did a lot of American horror movie homework, though, because they have perfected the synth-y sounds and gritty, neon-soaked look of about a hundred 80s films. Even the band's name pays tribute to John Carpenter! I was lucky enough to catch them in concert last fall when they opened for Ministry and was blown away by their expertly-crafted blend of horror, metal, and electronic music. 

This video gives a bit of a false impressions of what they're like live--the actual guy who is Carpenter Brut isn't a monster-faced hair metal dude jumping around the stage, but a stoic, bearded fellow who spends most of his time behind a massive keyboard setup. But the real focus in their shows isn't the band members anyway, but the meticulous videos playing behind them that they've tailor-made for each song. Every song is like its own little horror film being scored in real time! If they come your way, make sure to check them out.

Do the Dead!

Hang loose!

It's October 1st, but with temps still in the 80s and 90s it feels like a great day for surfing! With a corpse, of course. Since The Cramps were the original inspiration for this blog, the first post always belongs to them. "Surfin' Dead" was featured on one of the best horror rock soundtracks ever put together, 1985's Return of the Living Dead, which includes not only The Cramps, but classic songs by The Damned, 45 Grave, and Roky Erickson as well. If you're looking for a great movie to start your October Halloween viewing off right, you couldn't do better than the silly, goopy, surprisingly well-written fun of this quasi-sequel to Night of the Living Dead. It was the brainchild of the guy who wrote Alien, so no wonder it's so good. Forget eating brains, have a sample of this to help make the pain of being dead go away: